Assistant Professor,
A systematic approach to identify and eliminate waste through continuous improvement is termed as Lean. Systematic means there is a recipe that will help you avoid pitfalls. Removal of waste means you are left with highly efficient processes that create what the customer wants, when they want it and error-free. Continuous improvement means it is a continuous and iterative cycle, doing it over and over again to squeeze out every last drop of waste from processes.
Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System (TPS) and identified as "lean" only in the 1990s. TPS, the precursor of the more generic "lean manufacturing is renowned for its focus on reduction of the original Toyota seven wastes to improve overall customer value. The steady growth of Toyota, from a small company to the world's largest automaker, has focused attention on how it has achieved this success. Initially Lean has been mostly applied in the production division. Now lot of initiatives have been taken to apply this concept in Human Resources also. Lean/Continuous Improvement (CI) is a system or philosophy for managing people and work that: Encourages employees’ creativity and develops their problem-solving skills Influences employees’ behaviour to continually improve performance Builds a culture of trust, empowerment, teamwork, and respect Creates efficient processes that deliver value to the customer Relies on simple, low or no-cost solutions to solve problems at their root cause
Lean/CI can be applied at all levels of an organization to review processes from a customer's point of view and consider what adds value, and what can be eliminated. It helps to eliminate various kinds of wastes involved in HR processes like defects, over-production, over-processing, waiting, motion, transportation, inventory, unused talent, etc.
organization, improvement, lean
